Well, it took a lot longer than I’d like, but at last I can reveal the Accelerator 7.1 “Ship It!” award. This is the fifth time I’ve commemorated our releases in this fashion, which I think is pretty cool itself.

Since this release again focused on performance, I picked a daring old-timey airplane pilot — the sort of guy you might have found behind the controls of a Sopwith Camel, with a maximum speed of about 115mph. Here’s the trading card that accompanied the figure:

Accelerator 7.1 “Ship It!” Card Front – click for larger version

Accelerator 7.1 “Ship It!” Card Back – click for larger version

I included release metrics again, but where the 7.0 card showed just 10 data points, the 7.1 card packs in a whopping 48 by including data for the 12 most recent releases across four categories;

Number of days in development.

JIRA issues closed.

Total KLOC. This metric gives the total size of the Accelerator code base in thousands of lines of code, as measured with the excellent Count Lines of Code utility by Al Danial. This measurement excludes comments and whitespace.

Change in KLOC. This is simply the arithmetic difference between the total KLOC for each release and its predecessor.

Again, my sincere gratitude goes to everybody on the Accelerator team. Well done and thank you!

Like this:

With ElectricAccelerator 7.0 out the door, it’s finally time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the unveiling of the Accelerator 7.0 “Ship It!” award. This time I picked the Clockwork Android, in light of our emphasis on Android build performance. Here’s the trading card that accompanied the figure:

BEEP BOP BOOP

metrics metrics metrics metrics

As with the 6.2 award, I included some metrics about the release:

Number of days in development. This release was relatively long compared to our other releases — not quite our longest development cycle, but close. That’s partly because this release encompassed the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons, which typically costs us 3-4 weeks of development and testing time. We also deliberately pushed out the release date about 2 weeks to incorporate feedback from beta testers.

JIRA issues closed. We resolved 185 issues in this release. That’s double what we had in 6.2, and it includes some really cool new features.

Performance improvement. Since this release was all about performance, it made sense to include the data that proves our success. I had some trouble finding a good way to visualize the improvement, but I’m happy with the finished product.

Of course, none of the achievements in Accelerator 7.0 would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the incredibly talented Accelerator team. Thank you all!

Like this:

Obviously with ElectricAccelerator 6.2 out the door, it’s time for a new “Ship It!” award. I picked the mechanic figure for this release because the main thrust of the release was to add some long-desired robustness improvements. Here’s the trading card that accompanied the figure:

Greased Lighting — it’s electrifyin’!

Loaded with metrics and analysis goodness!

As promised this iteration of the award includes some metrics comparing this release to previous releases:

Number of days in development. We spent 112 days working on the 6.2 release; the range of all feature releases is 80 days on the low end to 249 days at the high end.

JIRA issues closed. We closed out 92 issues with this release, including both defects and enhancement requests. The fewest we’ve done was 9 issues; the most was 740 issues.

Composition of issues. Of the 92 issues, about 55% were classified as “defects”, and the remaining 45% were “features” of varying magnitude.

Again, a big “Thank You!” goes out to the ElectricAccelerator team! I’m really excited to be working with such a talented group, and I can’t wait to show the world what we’re doing next!

Having shipped ElectricAccelerator 6.1, I thought you might like to see the LEGO-based “Ship It!” award that I gave each member of the development team. I started this tradition with the 6.0 release last fall. Here’s the baseball card that accompanied the detective minifig I chose for this release:

The great detective is on the case!

The Accelerator 6.1 team

I picked the detective minifig for the 6.1 release in recognition of the significant improvements to Accelerator’s diagnostic capabilities (like cyclic redundancy checks to detect faulty networks, and MD5 checksums to detect faulty disks). Compared to the 6.0 award not much has changed in the design, although I did get my hands on the “official” corporate font this time. It strikes me that there’s a lot of wasted space on the back of the card though. Next time I’ll make better use of the space by incorporating statistics about the release. I actually have the design all ready to go, but you’ll have to wait until after the release to see it. Don’t fret though, the 6.2 release is expected soon!

When we wrapped up the ElectricAccelerator 6.0 release recently, I wanted to give my teammates something to commemorate the release. Traditionally these are called “Ship It!” awards, and they often take the form of a Lucite plaque or trophy, or even a physical copy of the product (on DVD or CD, for example) locked inside an acrylic block. I’ve gotten a couple of those over the years, and honestly I think they’re kind of a waste. The last one I got went on a shelf to collect dust for a few years before being relocated to the trash heap, which is a shame because those things are expensive.Really expensive. I can’t even imagine the cost of the monster awards that Microsoft gives out.

So I don’t really like the usual embodiment of the “Ship It” award, but I do really like the underlying idea. After all, shipping a software release is a significant accomplishment, the culmination of months or even years of effort by a team of smart individuals. And unlike many other human endeavors, there’s nothing tangible when you’re finished — no bridge spanning the bay nor tower reaching to the heavens. Having something to commemorate the accomplishment seems fitting, and it’s another small way that I can show my appreciation for everybody’s contributions.

The Ideal “Ship It!” Award

To me, the ideal “Ship It!” award has the following attributes:

Themeable: I wanted something I could customize for each release, while maintaining consistency across releases. I plan to make this a tradition.

Inexpensive: I wanted something I could bankroll myself, so I could retain complete creative control.

Compact: I wanted something that wouldn’t take up much space, so it would be portable and easy to display.

Geek appeal: I wanted something that my teammates would think is cool. Chunks of Lucite just don’t cut it.

LEGO “Ship It!” Awards

The winner!

After a few days of idle brainstorming and bouncing ideas off my manager and co-conspirator, I had what seemed like a great idea: LEGO minifigs. I could get a bunch of a specific LEGO minifig and give one to each person on the team. It fit all my criteria. There have been over 4,000 different minifigs released since 1978, according to The Cult of LEGO. In the last two years alone LEGO has release five minifig packs, each with 16 completely new figures, so I can count on having a unique character for every feature release for the next several years. Minifigs are cheap, too — the majority can be bought for as little as a couple dollars each on Amazon or ebay. They’re obviously small. And of course, minifigs are dripping with geek appeal. What techie doesn’t like LEGO?

There was just one small problem. Minifigs are a little bit too small. There’s nowhere to put the information that would identify what it represented — the product name, release version and date, and so on. A couple more days of brainstorming gave me the solution: custom baseball cards. There are several companies that will print custom baseball cards. These outfits are obviously intended for children’s sports teams, but they will happily print cards with whatever graphic you want. You just have to create images of the front and back of your card and upload to their website. And like the minifigs themselves, the cards are inexpensive, at about $1 per card.

The ElectricAccelerator 6.0 “Ship It!” Award

For the ElectricAccelerator 6.0 “Ship It!” Award, I chose the race car driver shown above (because Accelerator is all about performance, of course!). I bought the minifigs on ebay. I spent a couple hours designing the card, then ordered them from CustomSportsProducts.com. The front shows the minifig, the product name, version, and release date, and the major new features; the back lists the names of everybody on the team. Total cost for awards for the entire team was about $40 for materials — about the cost of just one traditional Lucite-based “Ship It” award.

I was a little nervous when I presented the awards to my team a couple weeks ago, but as it turns out I needn’t have been! The reception was overwhelmingly positive. Although I hadn’t explicitly planned it this way, the minifigs actually arrived unassembled, in individual pouches. Immediately upon getting theirs, each person dumped out the pieces and started assembly — it was practically instinctive! Several people commented out loud that the award was “Awesome!” or “Really cool,” and, of course, “Kinda nerdy, but cool!” With that kind of reaction, you can bet that I’m already planning for the next release.

And finally, here’s a picture of the ElectricAccelerator 6.0 “Ship It!” Award, as it is proudly displayed on my desk: